Choosing ESG reporting software for BRSR: a buyer's checklist

Most companies start looking for ESG reporting software after a hard first year: figures chased by e-mail, spreadsheets that disagree, and an assurer asking where a number came from. A good tool fixes the process, not only the formatting. This checklist sets out what to compare, in the order the work happens, and the questions that separate one product from another in a demo.

Start with what you must produce

Write down every output the software has to support before you look at features. For a listed company in India that usually means:

• The BRSR in SEBI's format, for the top 1,000 listed entities by market capitalisation, in the annual report¹.
• BRSR Core — the KPIs that need independent assessment or assurance: the top 500 for FY 2025-26 and the top 1,000 from FY 2026-27¹. They must be reported as the Industry Standards on Reporting of BRSR Core describe².
• The XBRL filing of the BRSR on the exchanges' portals⁵.
• Anything else you answer from the same data: CDP, a GRI or ISSB-based sustainability report, customer questionnaires, and programmes such as EPR returns, CSR reporting or India's Carbon Credit Trading Scheme.

A tool that only produces a BRSR document will leave the rest in spreadsheets — and you will reconcile two versions of every figure.

How does it collect data?

Most of the effort in ESG reporting is collection. Look at how figures get in, and whether they get in once:

• Forms that match how things are measured — meter readings, fuel logs against stock checks, utility bills by site, water as a balance, waste by category — rather than one box per BRSR question.
• Sites and months: can you see at a glance which site has not sent which month, and mark a source that does not apply at a site with a reason?
• Imports and connections: Excel and CSV with columns checked before saving, and connections to the accounting, ERP and HR systems that already hold the numbers.
• People at the plant: can a supervisor enter readings on a phone with poor signal, in their language?
• Suppliers and value chain partners: can you send a request, receive figures and evidence, and keep them separate from your own?

Can you recompute every calculation?

An inventory is only as credible as its arithmetic is visible. The GHG Protocol asks for inventories that are transparent, consistent and accurate³. In software terms:

• Each emission figure should show the activity data, the factor, its source and edition, its unit and the global warming potentials used — and keep them when a factor is later updated.
• Factors should apply by date: the factor in force for the month, not one typed into a total.
• You should be able to add your own factors (a supplier's, a lab calorific value) and see where they take precedence.
• Scope 2 both ways — location-based and market-based — with renewable certificates and green tariffs recorded, since buyers and frameworks ask for different ones.
• BRSR Core KPIs calculated from the approved figures, including intensities per rupee of turnover adjusted for PPP and per unit of output¹².

What will an assurer test?

BRSR Core assessment or assurance is now a yearly event for the largest listed companies, and from periods beginning on or after 15 December 2026 the international assurance standard is ISSA 5000⁴. Whichever provider you use will ask the same things:

1. Who entered each figure, and who approved it? Look for named approvers and a rule that nobody approves their own entry.
2. What is the evidence? Evidence attached to the figure itself, not in a shared drive, and a way to know a file has not changed since it was attached.
3. What changed after approval, and why? A history of corrections and restatements with reasons.
4. Can the provider work inside the tool? Read-only access limited to the period under review, with queries and responses kept together, saves weeks of e-mail.
5. Are assured figures locked? A figure that can change after the assurance statement was signed is a finding waiting to happen.

Our guide to getting ready for BRSR Core assessment or assurance covers these controls in detail.

Does it produce the filing, not just a report?

The BRSR goes to the exchanges as XBRL⁵. Ask to see:

• the BRSR in SEBI's format, with every answer traceable to its source figure;
• the XBRL instance generated from the same data, validated before you upload it;
• what happens when the taxonomy or the format changes — who updates it, and when.

Our guide to filing BRSR in XBRL lists the mistakes that cause rejections.

Security and data protection

ESG data includes personal data — wages by gender, safety incidents, complaints — so the software vendor will usually act as a data processor for you. Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025, notified on 13 November 2025, most obligations of data fiduciaries apply from 13 May 2027, including reasonable security safeguards, security obligations written into contracts with data processors, and a detailed report of a personal data breach to the Data Protection Board within 72 hours⁶. Check:

• Access: single sign-on with your identity provider, two-step verification, and roles that limit each person to their pillar or site.
• Integrity: an activity log that cannot be edited quietly, and evidence files that are fingerprinted.
• Data protection: where the data is hosted, encryption, tested backups, a data processing agreement, and how breaches are reported to you.
• Your exit: a full export of figures, evidence and the audit trail at any time, in formats you can use without the vendor.

Cost and effort

Compare the whole cost, not the licence alone:

Questions to ask in a demo

1. Show me one figure from the BRSR traced back to the meter reading or invoice, with its evidence and its approver.
2. Change an emission factor: which figures move, and is the old result kept?
3. Show me what the assurer sees, and what they cannot see.
4. Generate the XBRL file from this data and show the validation result.
5. Show me how a site supervisor enters a month on a phone.
6. Export everything — figures, evidence, audit trail — now.

If a vendor cannot do these with sample data in a first meeting, it will not do them with yours in March.

How ESGTrack helps

ESGTrack collects each figure where it is measured — forms for each kind of data, imports, connectors and an offline field app — calculates the GHG inventory with the factor, its source and its date kept beside every result, takes each figure through named approvals with its evidence fingerprinted, and produces the BRSR, the BRSR Core KPIs and the XBRL file from the same approved data. Assurers work, query and sign inside it, and you can export everything at any time. See the platform, BRSR and BRSR Core and trust and security.